


Another New Beginning

by regshoe



Category: Peccavi - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 22:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regshoe/pseuds/regshoe
Summary: Eight years after the events of 'Peccavi', Gwynneth Gleed thinks on the new life she has built for herself.





	Another New Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> 'Peccavi' by E. W. Hornung is a very good and thought-provoking book. It also ends with the main female character running off to live with another woman and raise a child together, which does present certain obvious opportunities.

The leaves of the plane-trees that lined the park palings were beginning to turn a pale golden-brown. As the bells of the London churches, chiming one after another like they do in the nursery rhyme, struck five o'clock, the sun was perceptibly lower in the sky than it had been at the same time a few weeks earlier. It was, thought Gwynneth Gleed as she walked sedately along in the sunlight and the sound of the bells, a time for reflection; and she had plenty to reflect on this year.

She was on her way home from running some errands in town, having stopped on the way to make the inevitable trip to her favourite bookshop and, finally, to visit the tailor's to see about Georgie's new school clothes. Until now he had attended a day-school not far from their little house at Richmond, but now he had reached the age to go away to his public-school: the school was chosen, the arrangements all made, and he was to go in but a few days' time.

Gwynneth shielded her eyes from the descending sun and looked along the street towards her destination, the now-familiar entrance to Waterloo station. They had taken the house a few years ago, moving there from the flat in which they three had first set up home together for the sake of the space and the quiet surroundings, and after so much time it was quite natural to Gwynneth to think of it as home. She went home.

*

A fresh breeze enlivened her short walk at the other end, blowing her shopping bags about exuberantly and whirling the first few fallen leaves of the year into her path. Georgie came out to the front gate to greet her, embracing her warmly—he explained, a little bashful, that as he should not be there for very much longer 'I must make the most of it while I can, you see'—and asking all about her trip to town.

'Have you got my new clothes? I should so like to see them... oh, the kitten got into Ella's work-basket this afternoon, while you were gone, she was very cross, but I think she couldn't be angry for long with such a dear little thing as it is, they were playing quite happily together just now...'

Gwynneth smiled and guided him towards the house. He was quite the little gentleman now. Sometimes, in small ways, the light of a smile or a certain tone of voice, he still reminded her of his father—but then he would say or do something so very much his own that she remembered that he was, after all, his own person, and that this was the present, not the past. Their talk of London brought Georgie back now to the latest of his idiosyncratic interests, though one quite natural at thirteen: sensational stories of adventure, crime and such things.

'Have you heard how the accomplice of A. J. Raffles has been sent to prison? Isn't it terribly sad—I thought them both so brave and dashing, though they were burglars...'

'Terribly,' murmured Gwynneth; but now they reached the front door, where Ella had appeared to wait for them.

'Come on, Georgie,' she said, though with a smile, 'I'm sure Gwynneth doesn't want to hear another round of the latest daring adventures when she's just back from her shopping.' She kissed Gwynneth, and ruffled Georgie's hair, and the three of them went into the house together.

*

Later, watching the sky turn to the deep blue-gold of the year's first autumn sunsets, Gwynneth's reflective mood returned to her. Georgie had gone to bed, Ella was downstairs, and she stood alone at the window of their sitting-room, all the insignificant little objects of the last eight years around her. She sighed, and opened the window wider, breathing in cool evening air.

The click of the door closing sounded across the room. Gwynneth turned to see Ella crossing the little space between them, and smiled; without saying anything, Ella put her arms around her and rested her head against her shoulder.

'I thought I'd find you up here,' she said, after a few moments. 'What are you thinking about?'

'Everything,' said Gwynneth vaguely.

'Now, I can't quite believe you there. Your powers of thought are not so great as that, love.'

Gwynneth laughed softly, turned around in Ella's arms and looked past her at the little room. There were the two tall bookshelves with their interesting variety of books, reflecting the tastes of all three members of the family—their ranks swelled of late with the addition by Georgie of a number of adventure stories. In the corner by the window was the desk at which she had spent so many hours studying those and other books: for London had, once she was settled into living there, given Gwynneth unexpected opportunities to reawaken her old intellectual strivings, and she was now a BA in English literature. There by the fire were the big armchairs where the three of them would sit of an evening, telling stories, working, arguing some point of philosophy—or simply talking together of nothing in particular. Behind her the light was fading over the park where they went walking together on fine days, and the river where they had once taken a boat and rowed out as far as Hampton Court Palace, and picnicked on the green banks beneath the willow trees.

Throughout this piece of reverie Ella had been following her gaze and, apparently, her thoughts. 'I know,' she said quietly. 'It will be hard for all of us when he goes, won't it.'

Gwynneth nodded. 'But I hope we've done all we can for him to be ready for it. And he'll enjoy going off to school, I'm sure, and having other boys his own age with whom to talk sensational burglaries.' Ella grinned.

Her memories were not all of Georgie, of course, and in the reflective state brought on by the thought of his departure she had been thinking of other things as well. She and Ella had come a long way indeed from the days when they had argued morality together in the hospital on Campden Hill. It was impossible, of course, that they should not grow closer, living together and having joint charge of the young Georgie; opposites they may have been, and in many ways still were, but their disagreements become more than ever directed towards a common purpose, and their respect and regard for each other had grown ever stronger.

Eventually, a year or so after they first returned to London together, things had reached something of a crisis. Ella, straightforward as she was, always one to mean to do a thing and do it, had quite plainly confessed the nature of her feelings towards Gwynneth; and Gwynneth, a little surprised at herself but nonetheless welcoming this new aspect of love, had accepted her.

Gwynneth returned to the present. Ella had disengaged from her arms and was drawing the curtains across, shutting out the growing night; the little room was lovelier than ever in the dim lamplight, and it struck her—not for the first time, but the feeling no matter how familiar never lost its sharpness—that this was her own place, hers and Ella's and Georgie's. Their home.

'Of course,' Ella was saying, 'we shall have more time to ourselves when he's away. It will be nice to be more often alone.'

'Yes,' said Gwynneth, still a little musingly; but thinking of the future soon revived her from her melancholy mood. 'We have so much to do... oh, I've been meaning to write that paper, the one I was telling you about, on the novels of George Eliot. It's such a good idea, and I shall have time to do the research properly now.'

'I'm sure you will, love, but that wasn't quite what I meant.' Ella was smiling.

Gwynneth returned a look brighter yet, and put her arms around Ella's neck. 'I know,' she said, and leaned in to kiss her; and the future looked quite as happy as these last precious years of the past.


End file.
